


The Hazards of Inviting Wizards

by Dulcidyne



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Costume Parties & Masquerades, F/F, F/M, Ghost V, Halloween AU, Halloween Costumes, Multiple Endings, No it's not too early for Halloween fics how dare you, Werewolf Zen, Witch MC, vampire jumin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-06 23:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12221313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dulcidyne/pseuds/Dulcidyne
Summary: The RFA’s Halloween costume party turns into a night of mayhem after Seven offends a wizard.(A Halloween Party AU fic with multiple endings)





	1. Chips are not proper canapes

**Author's Note:**

> I must be insane to start a fic the week before all my exams start kicking off but screw embryology, I want Halloween hijinx.

If you ask Seven’s opinion, the wizard is a grave disappointment.

Not that you did. Asking Seven for his take on the guests isn’t high on your list of party priorities. Things that are high on your list? Triple checking the canapes, _’Are you absolutely certain there is no garlic? I have a guest with an extreme allergy--_ ’, procuring another functional XLR cable for one of the news crews, and scrounging up antihistamines for Zen after it’s revealed that Seven’s Elly costume has bits of real cat hair (cruelty-free according to Seven, which does absolutely nothing to placate Jumin’s cold indignation).  

But you suspect Seven doesn’t care much about your list...mostly because when he finds you in the kitchens, sampling the canapes on their massive silver platters, he tells you as much.

“Ms. Coordinator!” He sighs as if there is nothing that could be done with you and your newfound obsession with salmon pâté and roasted artichokes.  “Please take a moment and think about something important--what kind of a wizard walks around without a staff?”

Frazzled, you do your best not to brace your hands on his shoulders and shake until his little cat whiskers fell off. “Seven...”

“Gondolf, Marlin--”

There’s no use. He’s impossible to ignore. “What about Larry Patter?” you point out.

“A wand is just a portable staff...” He pauses and peers over at the trays. “So you didn’t use anything from my book after all?”

You're still trying to figure out how he got his recipe book, _‘Honey Buddah Chips: 100+ easy and delicious recipes to comfort, restore and put a smile on your face’_ on all the big bestseller lists but you get the impression that once you start wondering exactly how he manages to do the impossible things he does, you won’t be able to stop.

“You can take it up with Jaehee. I didn’t have any control over the menu.”

Honestly, you would take Honey Buddah Chip encrusted scallops in a Ph.D. Pepper reduction over salmon pâté in a heartbeat. If only just because then you'd be absolutely sure you're not consigning a guest to anaphylactic shock.

While you consider this, the brim of your black hat dips forward, the whole thing threatening to topple yet again. Catching it with one hand, you ask, “Have you seen Yoosung? He was going to lend me a bobby pin.”

Seven tilts his head and narrows his eyes as if thinking very hard. You don’t buy it for a second, his bitten down lip is a held-back grin just waiting to burst through his faux bewilderment.

“Yoosung? I don’t know who you could mean--unless you’re talking about LOLOL’s legendary hammer-wielding warrior--”

This time you do reach out and shake him. Just once. His fuzzy white cat ears slip forward against his unruly red hair. “You’re one sentence away from spending the rest of the party washing salmon pâté off your fur,” you threaten but your menace is undermined by the continued wardrobe malfunction that is your hat. Hats. Always a mistake.

The grin slips free, crooked at the corner. “Miss Witch, are you offering to feed me by hand?”

You blush furiously at his tone and your hands can’t release him fast enough.

Seven leans forward and pushes back the brim of your hat, his eyes sparkling as they track towards the kitchen door behind you. “Are you trying to steal my affection from my cat mom? Careful--he’s the jealous type”

“I--”

“Ms. Coordinator...” Jumin halts at the open door, noticing Seven. Hmm, the kitchen never struck you as chilly until now. You half wonder if it's possible to use Jumin’s disdain to keep the ice sculptures from prematurely melting.

“Cover your neck!” Seven whispers and you take the opportunity to escape a lifetime in prison for the very justifiable throttling of one redhead in a cat costume by saying, “Jumin! Could you help me find Jaehee? I need to see if she managed to get our extra music stands.”

For a man in a cape and prosthetic fangs, Jumin is just too damn composed. For all you know, he’d just wandered out of a board meeting about possible revenue streams for coffin supply acquisitions. He considers your poor excuse for escape with a measured arch of his eyebrows. “I have trouble seeing what extra aid I could provide this effort…”

Jumin’s expressions are subtle, rapid affairs. Blink and you’ll miss them. He doesn’t smile at you so much as relax the tension around his mouth in a way that makes it _seem_ as if he’s considering the possibility of smiling. It is more endearing than it deserves to be, a smile hidden away like a secret begging to be found.

“...but I’ll do my best.”

In your rush to flee, you press your hand to Jumin’s elbow and practically shove him out the door into the banquet hall. Jumin, checking boxes in both ‘intimidatingly tall’ and ‘broad-shouldered’ categories, isn’t normally a person you’d be able to just shove around but the fact that he’s stock still against your palm probably has something to do with how you’d managed it.

Seven, wisely opting not to nettle more than he already has, doesn’t follow and stays behind in the kitchens. It is entirely likely that he just has a plan to ‘improve’ the canapes the second your back is turned. If so, you're beyond caring if a platter full of tapenade topped artfully with Honey Buddah chips makes it to the banquet hall. The rest of your list isn’t going to take care of itself.

As soon as you're out of earshot, you begin thanking Jumin for the rescue but falter before you can get the second syllable out. He is staring at his elbow. More specifically, at your hand still pressing against his elbow.

Panic curls around your ribcage and squeezes down, hard and fast. The rest of your thanks leaves your lips in one rapid exhale and you clamp your mouth shut a second too late, emitting solitary squeak that sounds, to your intense mortification, like a mangled chew toy.

It is an overreaction, freezing in place and squeaking. Jumin isn’t some Joseon Dynasty prince who will put you to death for deigning to put your grubby peasant mitts on his dignified personage...despite the impression he gives off indicating otherwise.

“Found you!” Despite his bulky costume armor, Yoosung practically bounds up, a shiny bit of metal catching light between his fingers. Beaming, oblivious, he shatters the tension by holding it out to you. You remove your affronting hand from Jumin’s dark sleeve and take the gift, offering a thousand silent thanks to him in the process.

“My hero!”

He flushes, reaching back to scratch the back of his neck and jostling the massive prop hammer nestled awkwardly in the crook of his arm in the process. Top-heavy, the head falls back over his shoulder while the handle swings out an arc that would have neatly collided with your chin if not for the hand that swats it away at the last second.

“Woah, watch it...are you alright?”

The back of a silver-furred hand brushes against your chin.

“Judging from the material, it’s not probable that it could have caused significant injury.” Jumin Han, ever the voice of pragmatism.

You nod, both to Zen’s question and Jumin’s statement of fact.

All Zen’s gallantry drops away in a huff, replaced by irritation that he directs towards Jumin. His costume’s wolf ears are so realistic, you half expect them to bristle up with anger and match his expression. “Not probable--hey, prop weapons can still hurt. If you don’t believe me, I can try hitting your face with that hammer and see if it causes ‘significant injury’.”

Jumin weighs this suggestion with a level of gravity that might be expected from a situation involving actual hammers. “I accept your challenge on the condition that I am provided with a prop weapon as well.”

“Wai--wait a minute!” Yoosung interjects, “This is a limited edition replica--”

“I wasn’t challenging you to duel! I was just saying you should be more considerate when someone gets hurt.”

“I wasn’t hurt,” you remind.

“Almost hurt.”

You miss whatever Jumin says next, finally spotting the approaching white ruffle of Jaehee’s apron through the multicolored press of costumed guests. She skirts around a skeleton, movements precise and clipped as tendrils of grey fog curl up around her ankles.

“I took care of the music stand issue and found a spare XLR cable.”

Of course, she did. She is a paragon of efficiency. All you’d managed to do was harass the servers and unleash Seven’s dubious culinary skills on the unguarded trays.

“Oh, and--” She procures two tablets from the pocket of her ruffled white apron and with a faint blush, offers them to Zen. “These are for you.”

You make another despairing note of your comparative usefulness. Jaehee makes all of this look so easy. You bet she would’ve accomplished more without your attempts to help. At least then the canapes would be chip-free and Zen and Jumin wouldn’t already be itching to fight--literally. Whatever Jumin is paying her, it isn’t nearly enough.

“Jaehee, are you Alice in Wonderland again? Wasn’t that your costume last year?” Zen asks.

“Oh--no, I’m Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.” She nods down to her sensible heels covered in not-so-sensible red sequins. “I didn’t have time to buy a new costume and I thought they were similar enough.”  
  
“Is V here yet?” You begin to ask only to trail off the moment you spot a server walking past, carrying a silver tray and what look to be small glass cups containing a single chip and a sprig of parsley garnish. _Seven._ Fists clenching into your skirt, you scan the room, finally catching a glimpse of him standing by an artful drape of glittering black chiffon and silvered cobweb, speaking with a strangely dressed man with pale blue hair.

It is the last thing you see before the banquet hall explodes in a burst of lavender smoke.


	2. Damsels and Decor

You wake, gasping. Fog, wisping whorls of purple candy floss, churns around you and you pull back the arm you’d flung out in a panic, watching your fingertips precipitate out from the violet mist. Echoes are dying fast, already too faint to pick out the terrible sound that dragged you into consciousness with your heart skittering and arms flailing.

Wide-eyed, you attempt to take in your surroundings but beyond faint impressions submerged in the twisting writhe of vapor, you can’t see anything--much less whatever made...that sound.

You shiver violently and promptly realize something is digging into your spine. Reaching beneath you, you grab whatever it is and bring it close for inspection. A miniature pumpkin--just like the ones in the table centerpieces. You hadn’t gotten the chance to see how they’d turned out and right now, you can’t remember why.

Why hadn’t you checked the centerpieces like you told Jaehee you would? Or found the cable? Or Zen’s antihistamines? Why are you lying down when there's so much left to do?

Nothing. No answers. Just a blank, opaque mist.

A dark blur flutters at the corner of you eye, spreading through the pale fog like spilled ink. You flinch away, a scream building in you throat only to die when you hear a familiar voice say, “Miss Coordinator."

Relief douses the adrenaline flaring to life in your stomach and your whole body goes lax. 

“Jumin!”

You’ve never been happier to see anything as you are to see him, materializing as if by magic to kneel beside you and peer down with a look of real concern in his slate-grey eyes. Jumin is here! Handsome as ever. Collected as ever--so long as you ignore the hairline fracture between his brows that says this is a situation that merits some worry. Part of you thinks nothing can really be wrong so long as Jumin Han is Jumin Han. He has a way of making everything around him just as logical as he is. Even things that normally shouldn't be--like occult books and realistic vampire costumes. He's basically the opposite of Seven.

“I’m okay,” you say--assume, really. You can't see or feel the rest of your body, for all you know you're missing your bottom half.

Jumin’s lips compress down. Dubious. “Can you move?”

You nod eagerly and sit up too fast, ready to finally sort this strange situation out.

There was a carnival ride you’d been on--thrown up on--once: the Tilt-A-Whirl. One moment, everything was fine and then the next, the entire world tipped, taking your stomach with it. This is just like that time, only instead of nausea, you're fighting back grey static swarming up around the edges of Jumin’s face while the ground cants beneath you as if on mechanical gears.

Your back thumps against the encircling band of his arm, knocking the breath out of you.The sudden shift in momentum snaps your neck backward--or would have if not for Jumin. His free hand cups the base of your skull and prevents it from cracking against the floor. Blinking away dizzy static, you look up at the man loosely embracing you in a way that would be more suited for a dramatic ballroom flourish--your torso draped over his arm, your hands clutching the front of his cloak.

Artful fainting, one of your skills apparently.

Jumin doesn’t meet your eyes. He’s staring, gaze fastened on a spot just beneath your jaw. Lips parting, he studies the exposed curve of your throat, transfixed. The hungry look stutters your pulse. No one’s looked at you quite like that before. You're not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.  

You gulp down the sugary grit coating your mouth and attempt to say something--anything to dispel the focused intensity of his expression. But the only thing you can think of is Seven’s teasing whisper--’Cover your neck!’.

“Cover your neck Miss Coordinator,” Seven says again. Louder. Closer. Less amused.

Jumin’s eyes snap away from your throat. He looks shaken and far too pale. His voice is steady as ever but it's less reassuring than you found it before. “There’s no need for that precaution.”

Seven chuckles and you crane your head, unable to catch a glimpse of him through the mist despite the fact that he sounds as if he’s right beside you. What is going on?

“From where I'm standing, it looks like there is.”

Jumin looks down, muted surprise flickering through his face. Then, consideration. “So it’s as I thought,” he mutters and that hairline crack is back, a fracture in his perfect calm.

“I’ll look after our party coordinator,” Seven assures, an edge to his words that hints there is no room for disagreement. “We’ll find Jaehee and the others in no time.”

Nodding once, Jumin glances back to you and frowns. The hand cradling your head flexes, sudden and involuntary, shifting cold fingertips into the fall of your disheveled hair to brush a chilly shiver against your skin. You can’t keep up with the subtle, rapid-fire emotions strobe-lighting across his features. Frustration and maybe regret? 

With care, Jumin draws back to disentangle himself from you. After you're sitting upright and not half-reclining in his arms, you release his cloak. The silk is hopelessly wrinkled where you’d been grabbing it and you reach out again to smooth down the creases but reconsider mid-gesture and curl your hands around your forearms instead.

“I’m sorry I can’t be of any use to you,” he says. “It’s best if I go.”

“Jumin--” you start. Why doesn’t he think he wouldn’t be any use? Why is Seven acting so strangely?

“Be careful...” He seems about to say more but instead, he exhales, shakes his head once and stands.

“Please excuse me.” Turning away before you can object again, he vanishes into the eddying purple mist.

“Are you hurt?” Seven asks from thin air.

Despite the softness in his voice, irritation prickles through you. Clearly, he and Jumin have already figured out everything and are more than content to leave you in the dark--or the lavender in this case--while they make all the decisions. And alright, maybe artfully fainting isn’t the most proactive step in a crisis, but even wannabe damsels in distress appreciate explanations.

“Seven. What is going on? I can’t even see you through this stupid fog. Did the fog machine have a meltdown?”

You wave your hands at the wisps curling around your wrists as if they are to blame for your situation, “Go away already.”

A firework-- _where did someone get fireworks?_ \--goes off in front of you--a shower of gold and orange sparks. You blink your eyes, surprised, and when you open them again the fog is gone.

Well, not completely, it still clings in a few places. But you can see at least. Marble floors. Chairs sashed like beauty pageant queens with glittering black and orange tulle. A few candles still gutter in their ironwork lanterns, spilling flickers of light over the miniature pumpkins nestled in moss and twisted birchwood branches--oh, the centerpieces turned out lovely after all.

You're in the banquet hall.

Something taps against your leg and you look down to see a small white paw.

“Miss Coordinator. Are you alright? Say something if you can hear me--here, how many fingers am I--”

The paw waves through the air before a whiskered pink nose scrunches up, momentarily perplexed--as perplexed as a cat can look anyway.

“Ah...I forgot.” The cat bites out a familiar half-chuckle.

You blink, stunned. “...Seven?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone for reading! Thank you for the kudos, they've cheered me up immensely through a tough week of exams and exam-related drama (you'd think grad students would act better wouldn't you but it's basically high school all over again.)


	3. Cats and Witches and Wolves, Oh My!

“You’re...a cat.”   
  
The cat sighs again, tapping the marble floor with a white paw. “I’m starting to think you really do have a concussion.”

You ignore him because he’s probably right. Your head is doing a great job of acting as if a swarm of bees have taken up permanent residence between your temples. Everything is buzzing, stinging and painfully loud. You clutch a hand to your forehead mid-wince and jolt when your knuckles brush against the wide rim of your witch hat. The stupid costume hat that had been slipping off all night staying firmly put despite all the damsel antics from before...somehow this is weirder than the talking cat.

Seven. The talking cat. The talking cat who is Seven Zero Seven. 

A giggle pops on your lips like bubblegum. Another one follows, and another in rapid jolting gasps that don’t do anything to help the head full of bees situation. But before you know it, you’re laughing so hard, you have to brace your hands against your legs as if you might shake apart from the hilarity at any moment.  

Seven clearly thinks you’ve lost it and humors you with a nervous chuckle of his own. It looks weird to see a cat try to chuckle. Their mouths aren’t made for it and it makes him look like he’s halfway through a sneeze. “I’m going to go see if I can get some help.”

Before the cat can slink away, you stop giggling and gently scoop it up into your arms, skimming your hands through the silky white fur around its neck.

“M--MISS!...W-w-what what are you doing?!” 

You frown when your searching fingers don’t hook on a collar. Where did he put it? He didn’t use tape did he? The poor thing. Your hands smooth downward and the cat squirms out your arms with a yowl. 

Seven’s bad animal treatment must be contagious.You feel terrible and coo apologetically at the poor creature for manhandling it without warning. “I’m sorry! I was just trying to find where he put the microphone.”

The cat spins to face you, affronted. Long white fur sticks up every which way and you have to keep yourself from reaching out and smoothing it back down. It could pass for Elizabeth the 3rd if it weren’t for the golden eyes--although Jumin would probably disagree vehemently that  _ any  _ other cat could approach the otherworldly beauty of Elizabeth. 

“Microphone? This isn’t a prank! It’s really me.”

For half a second, you consider the possibility of a very realistic robot but discard it immediately. Seven is a genius but the movements were too fluid to be anything but real. 

“Alright.” You decide to play along. He’s so committed, it’s just less effort to let him think he’s tricked you. “So how’d you turn yourself into a cat?”

“ _ I _ didn’t do this. It was the wizard.”  
  
You nod to indulge him, your eyes wide as if you’ve been taken in by all this. Speaking slowly, with an animated lilt to your voice, you say, “Of course, that only makes sense.” 

Still nodding, you extend your hand towards the cat for a proper introduction. But it doesn’t tentatively sniff your outstretched knuckles or hiss and recoil. Instead, it glances askance at the limb.

“...what are you doing?”  
  
How did he manage to train the cat to look like it was speaking? Just one more Seven mystery for the pile. You mean to find out. His pranks aren’t funny if they involve animal cruelty. You wish Jumin hadn’t left, he be much better at handling this traumatized creature.

“Stop that.” Seven demands, exasperation working its way into his voice, tapering it into a feline-sounding hiss at the end. “Look, I may have been wrong about the wizard, alright? And he  _ maybe _ took offense and decided to put us all under a spell to prove me wrong. I mean, just look around. Everyone’s gone. Your costume is different. I didn’t do any of that.”

Your costume? You glance down and see that he’s right. The skirt brushing over the tops of your knees isn’t the cheap costume-store nylon from before. Black satin edged in gold scrollwork puffs out over a tulle petticoat trailing strands of gold lace stars and crescent moons. When you move, the dark material frothing over your lap catches the light, sparkling glittering green-gold pinpoints.You frown, tugging at an yellow ribbon cinching a small corset into a vee at your waist. Well that’s  _ weird.  _

The buzzing in your head gets louder and the floor is doing another Tilt-o-Whirl shift but you viciously will back the grey static and focus on Seven’s paws, pressing two small indents into the cloud of fabric around you.

“Miss Coordinator--”

You both hear it at the same time. Worse, you  _ feel _ it, reverberating deep in your bones. Seven’s fur stands up on end until he’s twice the size of a normal cat and he hisses as another guttural snarl claws out from the shadowed curve of the staircase banister. You have to crane your neck to find the source of the sound--two red points glittering in the dark, as large and vivid as the winking ruby (entirely real and worth millions Seven informed her) pendant on Jumin’s vampire costume. A wisp of residual fog vanishes and a shaft of faint moonlight filters through the tulle draping the windows to catch a silvery line beneath the rubies. As they draw closer and you see more lines etch silver in the dark, tracing gleaming outlines of curved knife-points against the pale shape emerging at the top of the stairs. 

“Zen.” Seven says as your mind makes sense of the monster taking shape in front of you. It’s hard to look away from the mouthful of teeth. They must the length of your entire palm, sharp as the butcher’s knives from the kitchen, and glistening bone-white and wet against the snarling muzzle of the animal.

But--but, Zen would never hurt either of you. Just like Jumin didn’t hurt either of you. Sharp teeth or no, it was still  _ Zen _ . Zen the Knight. Gallant and sweet and eye-rollingly corny.  _ All men are wolves _ . But not  _ literally  _ right? _. _

The wolf--no,  _ werewolf _ \--pauses and drops down to all fours, tension coiling beneath the rippling white fur and you can’t stop your scream when he leaps over the balustrade, the floor groaning and shuddering violently around you beneath his bulk. Claws gouge furrows into the marble just centimeters from your skirts as you lunge away just in time to avoid snapping jaws.  
  
Tiny needles dig into your shoulder, a weight pressing you down to the marble as you yelp out in surprise. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see a small paw swiping out as if to bat away the mouthful of fangs cutting through the air just above you, sluicing spittle down their treacherous curved points.

“Seven!” You scream, snatching his furry body into the crook of your arm as you reach out with the other and hope desperately that your hunch is right and that the thing with the fog wasn’t just some weird fluke.

It’s as if someone’s lit off a dozen sparklers in front of your face. They pop and fizzle, throwing embers into the air, some of them landing on the snarling, furry muzzle. A canine yelp and a pitiful whine echo through the banquet hall and before the brilliant afterimages fade from your retinas, a voice cuts through the furor.

“Did you hurt him? You tried to didn’t you?”

Relief sags through your shoulders and if you could collect your shaking limbs off the floor, you’d run over to her and sweep Jaehee into the biggest, tightest hug. Only...once your dazzled eyes manage to track her through the gold, glittering smoke left by your magic fireworks, you see that she is furiously scowling at you from the staircase. Her straw basket bounces against her hip as she adjusts her glasses to leverage the scariest look you’ve ever seen Jaehee use against another person. It’s a look you’ve seen her direct (frequently) at Seven, even Jumin. But you’ve never seen it, the full indignant glory of it, aimed at you.

“A witch--I can only presume to be of the wicked variety given your treatment of my beloved dog.”

Maybe...a hug would be a bad idea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is just too fun to write and I guess I was feeling the Mysme Halloween hijinks again because of all the fics to dust off and start working on again--I didn't think it'd be this one. But ah well, it is a fun exercise at least!


End file.
